June 2026 Summaries

As engineering organizations grow and micro-service architectures become more complex, standardizing telemetry collection is essential, with OpenTelemetry (OTel) emerging as the industry standard for portable, vendor-neutral instrumentation. However, transitioning from established Application Performance Monitoring (APM) agents to a pure OTel SDK can be costly and risky. New Relic offers a hybrid agent that bridges the gap by supporting OTel APIs within its agents, allowing incremental adoption of OTel while maintaining existing APM capabilities. This hybrid approach enables developers to future-proof their instrumentation with OTel's open standards while leveraging New Relic's reliable infrastructure, thus offering a low-risk path to modernization and ensuring observability infrastructure is prepared for future demands.

SAP users are undergoing a major transition as the long-standing SAP ECC 6.0 and SAP Solution Manager (SolMan) approach the end of their eras, driven by the rise of distributed cloud ecosystems and advanced AI technologies. With SAP Solution Manager's mainstream maintenance ending in 2027, enterprises are compelled to shift to SAP Cloud ALM, a cloud-native application on the SAP Business Technology Platform. This shift presents challenges, as modern enterprise processes often span multi-vendor cloud architectures, requiring a move from traditional monitoring to advanced observability to manage complex, distributed environments. New Relic complements SAP Cloud ALM by offering a telemetry-driven observability platform that allows for seamless integration with existing SAP workflows while providing a unified view across SAP and non-SAP systems. This enables organizations to de-risk migrations to S/4HANA or RISE with SAP by automating performance baselining, accelerating test cycles, and aligning observability with business processes through tools like Pathpoint. As the 2027 deadline looms, New Relic’s platform helps translate technical telemetry into business value, ensuring enterprises can manage operational risks and maintain service level objectives in a rapidly evolving IT landscape.

New Relic emphasizes a culture of mutual respect and belonging, fostering an environment where employees can bring their authentic selves to work, which is crucial for thriving communities and innovative achievements. The company's commitment to LGBTQIA+ inclusion is reflected in its global practices and policies, earning a perfect score in the Human Rights Campaign Foundation's Corporate Equality Index. During Pride Month, New Relic engaged in various activities, including partnering with Point of Pride to support transgender individuals, hosting discussions on inclusive policies with executives, exploring family-building resources with Carrot, and organizing a virtual Pride Parade. These initiatives highlight the intersection of business, community, and support, underscoring the company's dedication to inclusivity and its impact on innovation and employee well-being. The blog post also notes New Relic's efforts to attract top talent by showcasing its inclusive culture through creative talent branding strategies.

Sentry is a popular error tracking tool known for its rapid setup and developer-friendly interface, but it often lacks the broader observability context needed for modern distributed systems. Errors are typically the result of underlying issues such as latency, resource pressure, or deployment problems, and standalone error tracking can lead to siloed data, forcing engineers to manually correlate logs, traces, and metrics. As a result, many organizations are exploring alternatives that offer unified observability platforms, which integrate real-time error tracking with application performance monitoring and infrastructure metrics for faster root cause analysis. New Relic and Datadog are highlighted as leading platforms in this space, providing a comprehensive view of system performance and user impact, thereby reducing the mean time to resolution (MTTR) by simplifying the troubleshooting process. These platforms facilitate a proactive approach by identifying issues before they escalate into errors, and they are particularly beneficial for teams operating across cloud-native and multi-region architectures.

New Relic has launched Notebooks, a new data exploration tool available for free to all Full Platform Users, designed to enhance incident troubleshooting and root cause analysis. With Notebooks, users can create structured documents that integrate live queries, visualizations, and markdown text in a unified workspace, facilitating sequential data exploration and side-by-side comparison. This tool aims to eliminate the inefficiencies of traditional workflows by offering features like multi-cell canvases, inline query comparisons, and persistent workspaces, while also providing natural language query translation and an intelligent query formatter for ease of use. Notebooks support fine-grained access control to protect sensitive data and allow for dynamic runbook creation, transforming workflows by enabling more efficient problem-solving and knowledge sharing during incidents. While Full Platform Users have immediate access to Notebooks, Core and Basic Users are encouraged to upgrade for full functionality.

AI-generated code is rapidly becoming the norm in software development, boasting high quality at the review stage but often leading to increased production incidents due to the concept of "agent debt," akin to technical debt. This occurs when AI-driven code and workflows are deployed without thorough validation, resulting in operational risks that require significant resources to rectify. To mitigate these challenges, New Relic introduces a suite of tools, including the Intelligent Observability Platform and New Relic Autopilot, which enhance AI observability by integrating real-time data insights into development workflows. These solutions aim to transform observability from passive monitoring into an active component that ensures the reliability of AI-generated code in production, reducing outages, improving resource efficiency, and fostering a more resilient software ecosystem. The platform's approach includes proactive incident resolution, domain-specific expert agents, and structured access to data insights, designed to support both startups and established enterprises in navigating AI-driven development complexities.

New Relic is advancing its commitment to support the public sector's transition from legacy data centers to cloud-native architectures by pursuing FedRAMP High and Department of Defense (DoD) Impact Level 4 (IL4) authorizations on AWS GovCloud (US) for its Observability Platform. These authorizations, which involve rigorous security standards, are crucial for protecting sensitive government data and ensuring compliance with federal regulations. By partnering with Coalfire Systems and Schellman Compliance for advisory and assessment services, New Relic aims to enhance its platform's capabilities, offering full-stack visibility, improved digital experiences, accelerated cloud migration, and comprehensive AI monitoring. This initiative underscores New Relic's dedication to providing secure, reliable observability solutions for federal and defense agencies, enabling them to maintain operational efficiency and security in mission-critical environments.

LaunchDarkly's decision to standardize its observability and telemetry workloads on New Relic underscores the importance of unbiased observability in high-velocity software delivery environments. As a leader in feature management, LaunchDarkly requires a reliable monitoring platform to maintain its control plane, which processes vast amounts of data for demanding engineering organizations. Their choice reflects a significant industry trend, as engineering teams increasingly seek observability solutions that provide independent insights without conflicts of interest. New Relic's focus on pure observability allows for unbiased data analysis, crucial as AI accelerates code deployment, reducing human oversight. The collaboration between LaunchDarkly and New Relic aims to bridge the gap between identifying issues and understanding the changes that caused them, facilitating safer and more incremental responses. This partnership marks the beginning of a deeper technical integration, which both companies are committed to enhancing for their shared customer base.

AI coding assistants are increasingly integral to modern development workflows, but they can introduce hidden costs and inefficiencies that are difficult to track, often resulting in unexpected expenses. New Relic Preflight, initially launched as AI Coding Observability, addresses these challenges by offering full observability for AI-assisted development, capturing session metrics, cost breakdowns, and efficiency scores. This open-source MCP server can be run locally or integrated with New Relic for enhanced analysis and alerting. It detects costly anti-patterns such as thrashing and blind edits, transforming AI spend into a manageable and predictable expense. Preflight also provides a personal efficiency score and weekly coaching reports that highlight areas for improvement, allowing developers to optimize their workflows. With easy installation and compatibility with various AI coding assistants, Preflight empowers developers and teams to gain insights into their AI interactions, making AI-assisted development more transparent and efficient.

New Relic has launched a program called "New Relic for Startups," offering early-stage startups free access to its platform, all AI features, and engineering support to help them navigate critical moments such as launch spikes and investor demos. The program, open to qualified Series A and earlier startups, includes full platform access for five users with generous data ingestion, ongoing office hours with engineers, launch day support, quarterly architecture reviews, and peer learning sessions. Rather than just providing credits, the program aims to build a successful observability practice from the start, supporting startups as they scale without needing to re-platform. The initiative is designed to be a long-term partnership, providing enterprise-grade visibility and expert guidance, allowing startups to deliver better applications and meet customer and investor expectations.

AI-native coding tools are being rapidly adopted by developers to accelerate software building and shipping, but a major issue arises from their isolation from production telemetry, leading to performance bottlenecks and operational issues. To address this, New Relic has launched an integration between its Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server and AWS's Kiro development environment, announced at the AWS Summit in New York City. This integration aims to enrich Kiro's workflows with New Relic's Intelligent Observability insights, closing the feedback loop between code commits and performance. This seamless, one-click solution empowers developer teams to enhance code quality, reduce mean time to resolution, and shift from manual troubleshooting to proactive, AI-assisted investigation. The collaboration reflects New Relic and AWS's commitment to modernizing operations and accelerating the transition toward autonomous, AI-driven software development, as evidenced by surpassing $1 billion in transactions through the AWS Marketplace.

Generative AI tools have become a significant part of software development, with industry leaders like Microsoft, Salesforce, and Google reporting high percentages of AI-generated code in their operations. The New Relic report highlights a paradox where AI-generated code is initially rated as high quality during reviews but faces reliability issues in production, leading to increased incidents and the need for senior engineers to address failures. This disconnect arises because AI tools excel at static checks but struggle with real-world execution dynamics, resulting in a "vibe coding" era where code readability does not equate to functional reliability. To address this, organizations are shifting telemetry practices upstream, embedding logging and metrics into the development process to improve observability and reliability. Engineering leaders are urged to balance operational efficiency, standardize governance policies, and consolidate monitoring infrastructure to leverage AI's benefits without compromising service level agreements.

Modern infrastructure generates vast amounts of telemetry data, creating challenges in managing and analyzing metrics, logs, and traces, particularly when they are scattered across different tools. Open-source observability tools like Prometheus, Grafana, Jaeger, and OpenTelemetry offer solutions for collecting and analyzing this data, but integrating these tools requires significant engineering investments and expertise. The process involves configuring systems to work together, maintaining compatibility, and manually correlating data during incidents, which can increase mean time to recovery (MTTR) and lead to alert fatigue. While open-source solutions provide flexibility and control, they demand ongoing maintenance and development efforts, especially for AI-assisted analysis. In contrast, unified observability platforms, such as New Relic, offer integrated solutions with built-in AI capabilities that simplify the process and reduce operational overhead, making them an attractive option when engineering resources are limited. The decision between open-source and unified solutions depends on the team's priorities and the value of engineering time, with each approach offering distinct advantages and trade-offs.

Modern engineering teams face challenges in managing increasing telemetry volumes across various systems, leading them to reassess their observability platforms, with Datadog remaining a popular choice but alternatives being explored due to costs and complexity. These alternatives, including New Relic, Dynatrace, SigNoz, Grafana, and Splunk Observability, offer features such as unified telemetry, AI-assisted troubleshooting, and flexible pricing models. New Relic stands out for its full-stack observability and real-time querying capabilities, while Dynatrace excels in automated discovery and dependency mapping. SigNoz and Grafana provide open-source solutions with a focus on customizable dashboards and integrations. Splunk Observability extends its log analytics into a comprehensive observability solution. The evaluation of these platforms is based on their ability to unify telemetry, provide predictable pricing, and offer AI-driven insights, making them suitable for teams seeking to improve debugging speed and reduce operational complexity. Migration from Datadog is recommended in phases to maintain visibility and historical data, with the right platform chosen based on specific technical and operational needs.

Logs and metrics are fundamental telemetry types used in software development to monitor and troubleshoot production environments, each serving distinct purposes. Logs capture discrete events with detailed context, making them ideal for root cause analysis, while metrics track system behavior over time through numerical data, offering a cost-effective way to detect anomalies and monitor trends. The integration of both logs and metrics, along with traces that map request flows, is crucial for effective incident response, enabling teams to quickly detect issues with metrics and delve into logs for detailed problem-solving. Unified observability platforms, like New Relic, enhance troubleshooting by combining these telemetry types, allowing for faster incident resolution through shared context and consistent identifiers. The document advocates for a strategic approach to telemetry integration, emphasizing the importance of unified storage, shared metadata, and optimized retention policies to maintain operational efficiency and reduce costs.

WanderAI, a travel-planning startup, aims to use AI to craft personalized itineraries based on user preferences but faces challenges in proving its effectiveness beyond impressive demos. The startup uses the Microsoft Agent Framework, OpenTelemetry, and New Relic to enhance observability, traceability, and operational efficiency for its AI agents. Key measures include baseline observability integrated with OpenTelemetry, custom telemetry for business-specific insights, dashboards, alerts, and service level objectives (SLOs) for ongoing system performance monitoring. Moreover, the implementation of a three-layer quality assessment system and security guardrails ensures that the AI's outputs are reliable and secure. This comprehensive setup enables WanderAI to transition from a demo-ready to a production-ready service by ensuring that every aspect of the agent's interaction can be traced, evaluated, and improved in real-time, fostering trust and reliability in its operations.

New Relic has launched a Private Trust Center within its Observability platform to offer paid active customers secure and direct access to detailed security and compliance documentation, enhancing transparency and efficiency in vendor management. This new resource serves as a comprehensive repository for essential documents such as SOC reports, ISO certifications, PCI compliance attestations, and internal security policies, allowing customers to download them without manual requests. The initiative aims to streamline the process of accessing critical compliance information, provide continuous updates, and integrate observability and compliance management into a unified platform. While the Private Trust Center is available to paid users, free-tier customers can still access high-level compliance information through New Relic's public Trust Center. This launch underscores New Relic's commitment to security, privacy, and transparency as ongoing priorities, aiming to bolster trust and confidence among its customers.

New Relic Experimental serves as an open-source incubator designed to bridge the gap between the debut of disruptive technologies and their formal enterprise rollout by providing a collaborative platform where New Relic engineers and global community members build, test, and share innovative observability solutions. This initiative addresses the challenges posed by the rapid adoption of emerging tools, which often lack formal integrations to monitor their quality and effectiveness. By offering a space for community collaboration, New Relic Experimental allows developers to experiment with projects such as AI Coding Observability, Machine Learning Performance Monitoring, and React Native Module, enabling them to gain insights into their tech stack's performance and optimize their use of AI tools and mobile frameworks. This collaborative sandbox not only supports the creation of cutting-edge telemetry solutions but also encourages community involvement to influence the evolution of these tools, with successful experimental projects potentially graduating to fully supported assets in New Relic's ecosystem.

Enterprise transformation is increasingly characterized by hybrid and complex environments, necessitating advanced observability solutions to maintain operational assurance and mitigate visibility gaps. As organizations adopt SAP's RISE framework and navigate cloud migrations and multiple SAP instances, New Relic offers Intelligent Observability to provide comprehensive visibility across hybrid SAP landscapes. This platform, developed in partnership with AWS, supports SAP modernization by offering a de facto observability choice for SAP RISE users on AWS. It features an agentless architecture certified for RISE with SAP, delivering end-to-end visibility and AI-driven assurance to protect critical business processes. New Relic's approach emphasizes a unified view of both SAP and non-SAP systems, facilitating faster time-to-value and operational clarity.

At the Microsoft Build conference, New Relic showcased its integration with Azure, emphasizing its Intelligent Observability platform that helps manage AI-generated code, distributed services, and autonomous agents beyond human scale. The partnership allows enterprise developers to seamlessly integrate New Relic's tools within their existing Azure infrastructure, enhancing incident response and system performance in sectors like financial services, retail, and technology by offering real-time alerting and dependency mapping. Key developments include the New Relic MCP Server, Azure SRE Agent, and monitoring solutions for Microsoft Foundry and SAP on Azure, which automate incident detection and provide observability context for AI agents. The collaboration aims to embed observability directly into engineering workflows, reducing mean time to resolution and defects, as exemplified by BlackLine's use of New Relic to enhance its financial operations software.

Kubernetes observability is essential for managing the dynamic nature of clusters where pods and services scale and reschedule automatically, requiring unified visibility across metrics, logs, and traces. The article compares several Kubernetes monitoring tools, including New Relic, Datadog, Prometheus + Grafana, Dynatrace, and Elastic Stack, each offering unique advantages based on team needs, cluster complexity, and integration requirements. It emphasizes the importance of features such as automatic resource discovery, real-time alerting, AI-assisted correlation, and dynamic baselines to reduce mean time to resolution during production incidents. Open-source options like Prometheus + Grafana offer flexibility but demand significant operational investment, while unified platforms like New Relic help streamline incident response by reducing context switching. Ultimately, the choice of monitoring tool should align with the team's specific priorities, whether that involves open-source flexibility, comprehensive log management, or a unified platform approach.